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Libertarian Political Progress
Two national alternative electoral parties : Source: http://www.green-horizon.org/blog/archives/2006/11/two_national_al.shtml :: Edited for this wiki. The 2006 general election showed that the Democrats did better than Republicans and the Libertarians did better than the Greens. Analysis: When the Republicans are in power, progressives get enthusiastic about the Democrats as "the alternative." Meanwhile, many conservatives get disappointed with what they see from the Rs in power and some turn to the Libertarians as an alternative. Conversely, when the Democrats are in power conservatives can get enthusiastic about the Republicans as "the alternative." Meanwhile, many progressives get disappointed with Ds in power and some turn to the Greens as an alternative. Montana in 2006 (King Makers) It could be argued that the "Libertarian factor" in the state of Montana gave the Senate to the Democrats. The Democratic Party senatorial candidate polled 49%, the Republican (incumbent) polled 48%, and the Libertarian got 3%. The USA's four-party system has two minor parties that consistently have the potential to impact outcomes. Only two alternative parties have a full national presence and any degree of impact: the Libertarians and the Greens. Smoke has cleared. After the ferment of the nineties where there were a whole bunch of new electoral initiatives, the smoke has cleared: The New Party, Labor Party, Reform Party, Natural Law Party, and Constitution Party have faded away. Some local alternatives exist: Working Families Party in NY, Independent Progressives in VT, American Independent, Peace and Freedom in CA. The Libertarian Party needs to be a political party, not an ideological position. An ideological position, akin to what the Socialist Party currently is in the United States, may help to fend off a drastic death blow to liberty, but it is ineffective in stopping the death by a thousand paper cuts that liberty is now suffering through legislation and regulation. While we may be the strongest alternative party, we need to be a lot more effective if we are going to stem the loss of liberty in our lifetimes. :Mik Robertson Indeed, but the often debated question is how do we become more effective? On that subject our socialist friend John "chicken suit" Murphy sent this out: The Death of Mythos http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=385 Posted in Doing Something by R Lee Wrights on November 19th, 2006 by George Squyres, Chair of the national LP Platform Committee Libertarian Party: If Libertarians were serious about winning office and taking over the government, they would stop bitching about government and instead bitch about Democrats and Republicans, because right now everyone hates them. That’s just doing real politics, but we don’t seem to understand things like that. - Anonymous Perhaps the greatest casualty of the 2006 election cycle for Libertarians was the death of one of our greatest myths, namely that a good Libertarian candidate with good name recognition, a good campaign manager, a decent team to handle media, and -the real key- adequate funding, would certainly be able to get elected or at least be very competitive. Even if the candidate was not victorious it would not be just another one of those four or five percent deals any more. Yeah, if we could only get the money we need to run a real campaign, we’d “git-er-done.” The 2006 Texas 10 and Arizona 1 Congressional races have forever destroyed that polite fiction. Michael Badnarik is an excellent candidate, and with the Presidential race to give him a reasonable chance at name recognition, adequate funding should have put us well into competitive range or at least well into double digits. No one is going to say Allen Hacker is not a damned competent campaign manager, either, but the fact remains that at the end of the day- Election Day- the Libertarian count was 4%. Yet $430K was raised and spent on putting Libertarian Michael Badnarik in front of the voters of Texas 10 and the result was not much different than our usual return for a paper candidate in a three-way race. Yet in the Arizona 1 race, David Schlosser raised and spent only $30K and got 5%. Schlosser was a one-man show, acting as his own campaign manager and media staff and, by all accounts, running one of the most professional Libertarian campaigns seen in Arizona. Yet he did it with only $30K, all privately raised, plus a lot of savvy and a lot of elbow grease. Indeed, the LP Candidate Tracker put Schlosser in its top five. $430K bought 4%; $30K bought 5%. Obviously it is not as simple as saying, “Aw, if we had as much money as those guys, we would win.” We had the money, the candidate, the campaign and the media, and not only did we not win, we did not even get into double digits. Is there anyone besides me asking, “What’s wrong with this picture?” We have held this myth, that the only thing keeping us back was money and now we can no longer say that. Oh, I know many will step up and attack Michael or Allen, or say that Schlosser had a good situation or any number of other things, rather than accept the truth. But the painful truth is that we just can’t indulge ourselves in that myth any more. The reason we get four or five percent is not because we lack funding. Our fund raising is improving all the time and it will continue to do so. The painful truth is that only four or five percent of the voters want to buy what we’re selling. Now as soon as a number of people hear me say that, both choirs of the purity/ pragmatism chorus will start their usual battle of the bands. Save it! We will not indulge their usual childish competition this time. Watering down the LP message to “We will give you everything you ever wanted, free” would not have raised the vote totals above 4-5%, nor would the likes of Penn Gillette spewing pure, unadulterated Rothbardian Anarcho-Capitalism on every TV in America have made any difference. The platform is irrelevant as a force in this issue. It is no coincidence that this occurs right at the time when the party is asking itself if it is a protest organization or a political party. Over the years, those who genuinely want to replace Republican and Democrat office holders with Libertarian office holders, those who want a political party that moves public policy in a Libertarian direction by electing its candidates to office, have become competent in the skills of professional politics. We know how to fund raise, we know how to campaign, how to work with media, how to create and use events, and all the rest. Those who want a political party know how to go about it pretty well, yet still don’t get their candidates elected. Those who are more focused on waging the battle where it really exists, namely between the ears, are also getting pretty good at knowing how to pull off an activist event that can wake a whole lot of people up all at once. Educating and protesting are a function that our members have pursued that has over time made a big difference in what the voters know. Aaron Russo’s recent film is the kind of effort whose results are what those who want a political party would love to be able to harvest on Election Day. We are making the kind of progress the socialists have made; many of our candidates find in their campaign that in the current debate their opponents are adopting the position they presented in the last debate. But we are still sliding towards totalitarianism. In other words, neither side is winning this battle. Debating whether we should be a political party or a protest organization, as everyone from our founders to our best activists is now doing, spends time and energy on a topic that will not change the matter regardless of the decision. It’s not even a matter of asking, “Would you vote for a party that can’t figure out what it wants to be?” The Republicans can’t figure out if they are social fascists or economic libertarians, the Democrats can’t figure out if they are social libertarians or economic fascists, and their guys are getting elected. What is stopping us from winning whichever part of the battle each of us is waging is us. I have written elsewhere about the impotence of the party due to the focus being internal rather than external, about the futility of fighting with other Libertarians over policy positions, about the irrelevance of the principle/ pragmatism debate, yet we continue to do these things while getting 4%. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We have debated about running candidates at the bottom or the top of the ballot; we have debated about presenting our principles or just presenting our positions; we have debated about whether we are a protest organization or a real political party. But in the end, all we do is debate these things, we don’t make any real progress. The reason is that we get nowhere is seen in a story I have told many times, but I will repeat it until the message gets through. An old Republican rancher friend here in Arizona, an influential member of the Republican State Committee, approached me at a land-use conference and told me he was a libertarian. I asked him why he did not register Libertarian and join our efforts. He replied that when the fight was over between Bush and McCain for the presidential nomination, Republicans who moments before had been bitter enemies closed ranks behind their candidate. “Libertarians don’t know how to do that, or why it’s important, and until they learn how, they will go nowhere. When they learn, I’ll reregister.” We debate over whether we should do one or the other, when the truth is that we need to be both. If we are to make a difference for the freedom movement, if the Libertarian Party is to be the freedom movement’s expression on Election Day, then we must change not only our tactics but our perspective. First we must recognize that at the federal level we have taken on the most powerful special interests in the world, that they won’t go quietly, and that we have neither the money nor the power to dislodge them right now. The only value to the top of the ticket, for those who do not suffer from megalomania, is for the purposes of education, protest, and making the case for freedom. That is the venue for those who wage the battle between the ears. Second we must recognize that until more than 10% of the country hears the word “libertarian,” and knows what it means, they are not going to care about what it stands for or vote for its candidates. Until we do the hard job of getting our message to the 90% of the country that hasn’t heard it, we won’t see freedom in our lifetime. On this task both sides have an interest. Third, if we are to ever change what goes on, it will only come from not being dilettantes at politics. Running candidates is important, but how many of the candidates we run are well known at city council and county board of supervisor’s meetings? How many have names that are familiar to the electorate because of making a case in the local papers on an issue or frequent letters to the editor? How many have gotten appointed to any of the myriad board positions available at the local level? If we are ever to take a top-of-ticket office, it will only come with a candidate who has a track record of local accomplishment. Our activists must stop spouting rhetoric about freedom and get on one of these local boards so that they know first hand what governing is about, as well as the difficulty of coming up with achievable solutions to local problems on Libertarian principles. Our successful candidates have run headlong into dealing with the day-to-day reality of government that are not solved by rhetoric, and know first hand the naiveté of many of our candidates who blithely proclaim “down with government.” This is the true venue of those who want a political party. Because if you can’t do it here, you’ll never do it anywhere else. Simple as it sounds, until we stop debating over how freedom is to be won, and realize that it will be won only by all of us doing for freedom what we do best, it will not be won. If the guy next to you wants to go about it differently, don’t tell him he’s wrong, encourage him to go for it. You’ll have encouraged a freedom fighter to keep up the battle. There’s too much work to be done to argue over who does what. The politicians should focus on building the political machines at the local level that will enable us to succeed at higher levels, and supporting their activist troops in their endeavors. The activists should keep in mind that their success can have an additional payday at election time, and do what they can to support the efforts of those who do the drudgery of real politics. To say we must be one or the other divides those who want to work for freedom, making our goals that much harder to achieve. The politicians can no longer say they only need money; they need what the activists will produce in the minds of the voters. The activists can’t do it without the politicians, because if there are only statist candidates on Election Day, freedom loses. If we stop asking which we should do or be and recognize that together we are the greatest tag team in politics, then we can be the force in politics needed to restore freedom to our country. The real question for each of us is which do we value more, freedom, or fighting with someone else in the freedom movement hoping to prove he is doing it wrong? George is chair of the national LP Platform Committee. Contact Mr. Squyres at gsquyres@gotsky.com.